Dreams of Water Read Free Page A

he look like?’ Aneesa blurted out.
    â€˜Is that a trick question?’ The man gave a harsh laugh. She shook her head.
    â€˜That’s not what I meant.’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ the man said, lifting his hand to his head. ‘He’s got a large scar on his forehead. He says they killed him three days after he was taken away.’ Then he reachedover and placed his hand over hers. ‘He wants you to stop worrying about him. Tell your mother too.’
    She closed her eyes and sat in silence for the rest of the session, strangely comforted by the unlovable man in the armchair opposite.
    Did I ever tell you, Salah, what happened after my father died? We no longer went up to the village in the mountains. I told my mother that I missed the smells there and the slanting sunlight that passed over rocks and gorse bush and ruffled them like the wind. I knew Father’s spirit was waiting for me there. He’s in the garden, mama, I said, pruning the rose bushes like he used to. I saw him in a dream. This is our only home now, she said, making a sweeping gesture with her arms that encompassed the flat, the streets below, Beirut and perhaps even the sea. You’re too old, Aneesa, to make up stories, even if you do miss your father. Forget the mountains and the village. And I did, growing up into never looking back, drifting into a kind of living .
    Soon after Bassam’s disappearance, I arrived home one day to find my mother sitting on my brother’s bed surrounded by papers. She had found them in the back of his cupboard, hundreds of political leaflets and lists of names that she did not recognize. She asked me if I had known anything about them. I told her Bassam had mentioned his political involvement but did not elaborate much. I don’t want to put your life in danger as well, Bassam had said to me .
    My mother stood up, grasped me by the arms and shook me hard. You never bothered to tell me about it,you silly girl, she said, her voice rising. You never took the trouble to tell me. Then she burst into tears .
    There are times when I wish I had told you all this when we were together but I was afraid of spoiling the quiet joy we felt in our friendship, of harming it with unrelenting sadness .
    Perhaps there were many things you would have liked to tell me too, Salah, but never did. Whenever we were together we seemed to speak more of everyday things, steering a long way from the vagaries of our troubled minds. I remember sitting on the floor in the drawing room of your house on that very cold night when snow covered the streets of the city, a fire in the huge stone fireplace, talking of Lebanon. I rubbed the palm of my hand on the carpet beneath me and looked down at the blue, beige and soft white images of birds and deer in its weave. I told you there were times when I liked it in this city with its pockets of green, and the loneliness and peace it brought me. Trouble seems such a long way away, I said. When I told you the story of my brother’s abduction, you asked if that was why I had left in the first place. I nodded and you paused before saying: I’m glad you came here, Aneesa. I mean, I’m glad I met you .
    It is mid-morning and Aneesa and her mother have had another argument about Bassam. It is raining hard outside and Aneesa decides to walk along the Beirut Corniche. Big drops of rain splash heavily on to the uneven pavement and on the crests of the mounting waves. She adjusts the hood of her jacket and digs her hands into her pockets.
    There are stone benches at regular intervals, each shaped like a flat, squat S, and at the end of the pavement a blue iron balustrade that is bent and broken in places overlooking the sea. There are also tall palm trees planted in a long line on one side of the pavement with what look like burlap bags covering their underside, high up where the remaining leaves flutter in the wind. And if she turns her head to look across the street,